A Hot Night of Choreo at C.H.A.W. – DC Summer Dance Showcase 2024

DC Summer Dance Showcase at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

545 7th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003.

Friday, August 16, 2024, 7:00 pm

By LUELLA CHRISTOPHER, Ph.D. (@luellachristopherph.d)

The DC Summer Dance Showcase played to an intimate packed house at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) on August 16, 2024. A hot summer night afforded the perfect opportunity to absorb the breadth of contempomodern choreography currently available in the DMV – a genre that almost defies definition as it is forever evolving. Malcolm Shute, certified movement analyst, founder of Human Landscape Dance, and teaching artist in Towson University’s dance department, grasps this truism and has curated a show with a dazzling array of works from personal rituals to traditional Bharatantyam to interactive video and live performance to updated ballet – a diversity of aesthetics that seizes the occasion to captivate each member of the audience.

Covenant Babatunde, choreographer and dancer in “Maybe, if there’s time” to music by Ben Howard, makes abundant use of spoken narratives – both individual and collective. The five female dancers each take the spotlight yet interact with each other to bombastic rock strains as well as considerable pauses. Lively and evocative, Babatunde is a commanding presence for the others to emulate.

Choreographer and performer Davina Etwaroo gives the audience a taste of Bharatanyam in its iconoclastic form of a solo. “Theruvil Varano” to music by Muthu Thandavar yields the most expressive use of hands and fingers, in addition to eyes that are dominated by her “whites” and seemingly reach to the back row of the house. She appears to interact with an invisible other, expressing a range of emotions from fear to contrition in the hope that “the Lord Shiva may pass through her street”.

“Rain On Window”, a reflection on the pain of grief and loss by Malcolm Shute in collaboration with dancers Carrie Monger and Alexander Short to music of Arvo Part, makes elaborate use of projections on the back wall without ever advancing to the front of the stage. In pairs and sometimes separate or together, the three literally crawl, slide, and climb over each other as their feet, hands, and limbs continuously engage with the wall. It’s disturbing while simultaneously tugging at audience heartstrings. Indeed, this obvious contact dance seems more choreographed than improvisational, a particular skill of the venerable Shute. This writer has morphed from disliking and feeling skeptical about the genre to watching with studied admiration.

“Within Time” by Aura CuriAtlas Physical Theatre arguably provides the evening’s most provocative work. Choreographed and performed by Joan Gavaler, a race against the clock is vividly conveyed by projections of timepieces, some with melting hands! News headlines and notices of “no messages” on the live dancer’s electronic devices intrude. She both mirrors and battles or at least resists the unrelenting passage of time, almost to the point of becoming sucked into or subsumed by the runaway clocks. Fortunately, the living character adapts and finally feels reassured.  

“My Sweet Mizuko”, Stacey Yvonne Claytor’s paean to the sorrow of disrupted pregnancies is potentially powerful but loses its poignancy by the use of too many characters. In this writer’s view, a solo or duet between female friends would have served the choreographer’s vision more effectively. The wailing and screaming that interrupts the music by Jack Hemsey serves to propel the piece into overstatement and excess. Cradling unborn babies is indeed touching, but why is it necessary to hammer home the point? All of us must endure the loss of both living and anticipated family to one degree or another. We also frequently lack any control over the process, but we must live to love another day.

 Yet another example of distraction and misdirection is presented in choreographer and dancer Jenna Kristine’s “Hollow”, set to music by Dylan Glatthorn. Garbed in a raggedy ballet tutu and white face mask, the soloist crawls and scampers about until her outer veil is discarded, leaving her (according to program notes) with a chance to emerge as a new being. This writer was barely able to discern Kristine’s published narrative before the piece ended abruptly. As such, it left some of us wondering what truths it was meant to convey. An expansion and revisiting of her work might help significantly.

Nick M. Daniels, a veteran of the genre that extols raw emotion in African-inspired styles, delivers a knockout punch with “Opus 728” to traditional music sung by Tina Turner. The rotund and tattooed dancer, having emerged from a twenty-year hiatus of non-performance, so dominates the space that one almost forgets to look up and view his abstract, ethereal projections of brightly-colored, undulating clouds. Daniels dips, swirls, and virtually takes a deep breath with each movement. He is a one-man marvel. 

“Painting Lindy” by choreographer and dancer Zena Nguon, a member of the Claytor Company, delivers a clear riff on Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (the Great Gate of Kiev) by The Piano Guys. It struck this writer as a wedding venue. There’s the single male, attired in suit and spats, enmeshed in a sea of rainbow-color gowns on nine female dancers that could pass for bridesmaids’ dresses. Two of them who pair off briefly are ensconced in white or cream, leaving this writer to mischievously ponder whether they are competitors for the lone man. Nguon’s work contained the most satirical content of the evening, if decidedly subtle. Would like to know more.

“Resonance” by choreographer and performer Sylvana Christopher is an adaptation of her original large-ensemble work now cast for four dancers. She brings back the versatile Aaron Jackson, a colleague from early Arts United days, who distinguishes himself as a humorous dancer on his rollicking, airborne diagonal of leaps. He is also a sensitive partner who can execute soaring lifts with Christopher. The pairings give this work an immediacy that doesn’t even need a narrative. Christopher’s piece is the most abstract and balletic of the evening with a petite nod to Lucy Bowen McCauley, who was particularly fond of windmill arms. The music was composed by Christopher’s husband, guitarist John Lee.

The shows continues through Saturday, August the 17th. Tickets can be purchased here.

© 2024 LUELLA CHRISTOPHER, Ph.D.

Luella Christopher (she/her) Is author of Pirouettes with Bayonets: Classical Ballet Metamorphosed as Dance-Drama and Its Usage in the People’s Republic of China as a Tool of Political Socialization, (Ph.D dissertation, School ofInternational Service, The American University, 1979, Washington, D.C. Archived at University of Michigan)